


at the end of the world (or the last thing i see)

by oblivixsity



Series: the ghost of you [1]
Category: Minecraft (Video Game)
Genre: Character Study, Dream Smp, GHOSTBUR !!, Gen, Wilbur Soot and Technoblade and TommyInnit are Siblings, anyways feel free to bully me for writing block man fanfiction, but when you’re inspired you write yknow, i don’t know where this came from, mentions of phil tubbo and dream, probably incorrect lore, set during the exile arc
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-06
Updated: 2021-02-06
Packaged: 2021-03-18 17:01:29
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,028
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29246979
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oblivixsity/pseuds/oblivixsity
Summary: tommy didn’t know how to feel about ghostbur.
Series: the ghost of you [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2147604
Kudos: 20





	at the end of the world (or the last thing i see)

**Author's Note:**

> title from the ghost of you by mcr. it makes me think of tommy and wilbur. go watch the [music video](https://youtu.be/uCUpvTMis-Y), it’s really good :]
> 
> (for the record this is about the characters not the actors, if it somehow wasn’t clear)
> 
> ghostbur is so interesting to me as a character, and i’ve been thinking about him a lot. (wilbur’s acting and story telling will never cease to amaze me, i’m very excited to have him writing again.) for some reason or another, that spawned this. it started as a ghostbur outside-pov character study, but it’s kind of more about tommy now, oops.  
> i just really like exploring tommy’s motivations, can you blame me?  
> please forgive any mistakes in either plot or grammar, this is kind of a brain dump. i hope you enjoy :D

Tommy wasn’t sure how to feel about Ghostbur. 

He wasn’t the Wilbur Tommy had known, not for a long time. To many on the server the apparition was an entirely different person. But to Tommy he was more of an... echo. An echo of a man long dead.

It was painful to be near him. His presence, his naivety and endless kindness, left laughter ringing in Tommy's ears, echoes of days long past, faded and tear-stained memories of chasing each other through fields and sparring with chipped wooden swords. Wilbur had always let his younger brothers win, but he had always refused to admit it when Tommy complained. He took that confession to his grave.

To his grave.

The man Tommy knew in his final days wasn’t Wilbur, not the real one - the one who braided Technoblades hair when he had first started to grow it long, the one that was always there to pick up the pieces when Tommy went too far and fucked something up. The man with insanity in his blood, the man who had blown up his own  _ country,  _ his own  _ home,  _ wasn’t the same as the fearless leader Tommy had been close on the heels of his entire life.

Ghostbur… Ghostbur didn’t feel like either of them. 

And yet, sometimes, on quiet days, Tommy would be wandering aimlessly around the SMP and find Ghostbur standing still, his eyes locked on him with dead cold gaze that tore right through him, a gaze that sent whispers of “Tommy, let’s be the bad guys” creeping up his spine. The smell of gunpowder always seemed to linger in the air those days. Somehow, it was so much worse than the echoes of a childhood lost to time.

Sometimes Tommy wondered about ghosts. He had a theory, not that anyone cared to listen - even Tubbo seemed content to wave off Ghostbur’s memory loss and innocent persona as exactly what it appeared to be. And maybe he was right, maybe they all were.

But when Tommy felt those words prick at his skin, when Ghostbur, mid conversation, would freeze and look as if he lost something precious to him, it came rushing back, full force.

Had Wilbur wanted this?

Had something in him, when he died, longed to make up for what he had done to his people, to his family?

Could he have repressed it all, so deeply that all he had left to embody was the same fourteen-year-old boy that had patched up Tommy's knees in front of the fireplace all those years ago? 

Tommy couldn’t get it out of his head.

And maybe that’s what drove him to his brother’s doorstep the day Dream burned down Logstedshire. The brother he hadn’t spoken to since Wilbur's death. 

He didn’t forgive the pigman for all he had done - he couldn’t, not after what he’d done to Tubbo, not after he had aided Wilbur’s descent into insanity. 

But he needed answers. And supplies. (That was probably the more important bit. He had no armor or food and had only just decided he didn’t  _ actually _ want to die.)

When Technoblade had found him huddling in the basement, probably half-dead from malnutrition and hypothermia, he had been pissed as hell. At the time, Tommy was confused - why was Techno the angry one? Tommy was the one with the right to be angry here, Techno had killed his best friend - but the man had still patched him up and sat him in front of the fireplace. 

It was awkward at first. The two had always had Wilbur there as an equilibrium to Tommy's natural exuberance and Techno’s introverted nature, but they soon came to an agreement. A treaty.

It was rocky and messy and tense the first few weeks. But it got better, slowly. Tommy might’ve even begun to consider Techno his big brother again - something he hadn’t uttered aloud in years.

Excluding business and bickering, they only had one real conversation, the night before it all went to shit.

Tommy had been doing something mindless - he couldn’t remember what anymore, in all honesty. He was probably mending something in preparation for the festival the next day. He remembered what techno was doing though - he was brewing invisibility potions. The smell was potent and thick, it made his eyes water. Techno’s basement was smoldering, so Tommy had been curled up under the open window, trying to catch a breath of cold air. 

It had been dark. The sky was obscured by clouds, was it snowing? Maybe that's why his hair had been wet. In that dim little room, with the clouds closing in and nothing but the muffled  _ clang _ s of Techno working, Tommy had felt trapped, right there, in his head. 

The real world - the festival the next day, Tubbo, Dream, the disks - felt miles and miles away, and the moment stretched endlessly. 

He hadn’t felt quite like that since Phil’s old cabin deep in the woods, when they were kids, the one that had always smelled of linen and firewood and  _ home. _

_ Safe,  _ something in his chest whispered. 

No, no, no Tommy wasn’t allowed that feeling. Not anymore. Not until he got the disks back. (Not until he got Tubbo back.)

But there it was, bright and warm and comforting, smoldering deep in his gut. It lowered his inhibitions, his instincts. 

Its’s probably what prompted him to open his mouth. 

“Hey, Techno?” It was soft, open. Tommy didn’t like the way it sounded to his ears. He sounded weak.

But the warmth in his gut prompted him let it go. 

Technoblade glanced up from his position stooped over the brewing stand. He had been sat like that for hours, grinding endlessly. although he would never admit it out loud, Tommy really respected the man’s ethics.

“Yuh?” he had responded, face guarded, as usual. Tommy tried to remember a time where the warrior hadn’t been stoic and cold, but he couldn’t. The Techno he had grown up with felt like an entirely separate man from the one sat across from him. Tommy wondered when the divide had formed.

“What do you think of Ghostbur?” The words slipped out of their own accord, with an urgency even he was surprised by. 

Techno’s mouth formed an “o” and he turned back towards the brewing table. He resumed working, and was silent for a minute.

“Where did this come from?” he finally asked, and Tommy sighed. They had been walking on eggshells around the topic of Wilbur the entire month. 

“I don’t know, he was by earlier.” Tommy had closed the window then, though for what reason was lost to him. “He’s not the same as Wilbur.”

“I wouldn’t say that,” Tommy turned towards the man at the words and their eyes locked. “He’s dumb and forgetful, sure, but I still see pieces of Wilbur in him sometimes. Pieces I haven't known in years.”

_ So it wasn’t just him.  _

The two lapsed into silence, thinking. Remembering. 

“He kind of feels like- I don't know, a ghost of who Will used to be,” Tommy said slowly, still forming the thought. 

At that Techno let out a short laugh. To some degree, the tension eased. “He  _ is  _ a ghost, Tommy.”

Tommy sputtered, “I- yes but I mean like! He’s like, pieces of Wilbur but not the full thing.” 

Techno’s laughter faded and he nodded, still smiling softly.

“In some ways I think he’s all the parts I miss.”

Techno spoke the words gently. A confession. Deep in his gut, Tommy knew the words would never leave the room. 

“He’s like a little kid again, I guess? But everyone else seems to just see him as a different person.” 

Techno snorted. “None of them knew Wilbur as a kid, Tommy. We did.”

In that moment Tommy understood how this stoic warrior and his feisty big brother were, in fact, the same person. His smile - his real one, not the fucking insane one that radiated bloodlust - was the same as it had been ten years before, that time when Phil had brought home an injured philly he had found on the side of the road. 

They didn’t speak again that night, other than to say good night and slip off to bed. They didn’t need to.

—

Water roared in his ears. There, right in front of him, were his friends, his family, his people. And- and they weren’t on his side.

He hadn’t done this- _Tommy_ _hadn’t done this_. He had made a joke about it the night before, but no one except Techno had heard that, right? He hadn’t actually done it, why did they believe he did it? Why was Dream saying he-

And Tubbo believed him. 

He didn’t even feel his body move before he was in the center of it all. He  _ hadn’t blown up the community house _ , what the fuck? 

Dream was taunting him, Tubbo was  _ giving dream the disk _ , and then he was fighting tubbo and he was angry, he was so fucking angry.

If he couldn’t trust Tubbo what the fuck did he have left?

“ _ The disks are worth more than you ever were!” _

He hadn’t even meant to say it. The words had torn themselves out of his chest in the heat of the moment, but the second they reached his ears he froze, dead still. Tubbo, his best friend, was right there in front of him, and he didn’t even look surprised. 

He wasn’t crying. He just looked disappointed. 

Had this- is this what he had come to? Had he really let down the people he cared about this much?

Technoblade had been kind to him. He had been a mentor of sorts. But by staying with him, working with him, Tommy was hurting his friends. He- he didn’t like who he was becoming. 

Tommy didn’t want to be the bad guy.

“Give him the disks, Tubbo.”

And it was over.

But then he turned. And there, standing above him, was Technoblade, his big brother, looking down on him with something akin to hurt in his eyes. 

Fuck. 

The moment caught in his throat as Dream kept talking, kept insulting his freinds - the fucking bastard - and then he turned to Techno.

And Techno looked right at him, right at Tommy, as he declared the end of L’manberg. As he told Tommy exactly what path he had chosen.

Guilt boiled in Tommy's gut, but he had made the right decision, he knew it.  _ This _ was the right side of history, and he never wanted to be on the other end of Tubbo’s sword ever again, no matter the cost. Even if that cost was the expense of his family.

They would defend Wilbur's memory. together.

—

The L’mantree was gone.

It had burned in the explosions, or someone had burned it, it didn’t matter - it was gone. 

That was all Tommy had left of Wilbur. 

(Other than the torn trench coat that lay hidden in the back of his ender chest, but that never brought back the good memories of Wilbur anymore.)

L’manberg had lost its last life. It was dead, and it was dead for good. 

Tommy had failed. He had failed Tubbo, he had failed Wilbur. 

And as the ashes settled and the rain pelted down, he stood on the obsidian grid that towered over the rubble, looking down. Tubbo stood at his side. 

Something in him stirred as he stared all the way down. The pit reached all the way to bedrock, in some areas. 

Tommy didn’t even flinch when ghostbur appeared out of thin air, floating in front of him. Over the void. Over the remains of L’manberg, just as dead as him.

It was almost poetic.

“Tommy.”

Tommy turned towards the man. His eyes flickered down towards his stomach, where the gash Phil had left him lay hidden under swathes of yellow fabric. He tore his gaze back up towards the apparition’s face, and found himself surprised by the determined set of his brow. He had never seen Ghostbur this serious before. What was he-

His next words ripped the air out of Tommy's chest.

“Tommy. Tommy, I want to be brought back to life.”

**Author's Note:**

> i would never have expected to write for this form of media in any sense, but i saw tommy’s reaction when they tried to revive wilbur and this kind of just came pouring out of me- 
> 
> also i know techno being part of the sbi family isn’t technically canon, nor does it really fit into canon all that well, but it is canon in my head, fuck u mr. blade
> 
> hope you enjoyed! feel free to ask any questions or drop suggestions for anything :]


End file.
